"I Never Said You Stole His Money:" Why “Bible Alone” Doesn't Work (#455)

About this episode

Greg Smith discusses the chaos of modern biblical interpretation and the need for context in understanding Scripture.

What if the way we’ve been taught to read the Bible is actually creating the very divisions we see today? In this episode of Considering Catholicism, host Greg Smith shares his experience from classical Calvinist seminary training 40 years ago — investing in 22 volumes of Calvin’s commentaries and the massive Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English lexicon because exegesis was required to stay within the guardrails of historic Christian interpretation. He then contrasts that with today’s evangelical reality: small groups asking “What does this verse mean to you?”, pastors mixing and matching translations to fit their message, YouTube and social media teachers offering personal takes, and even AI being asked to interpret Scripture. The result is interpretive chaos. The same Bible produces wildly different — and often contradictory — doctrines on core issues. To drive the point home, Greg uses one viral seven-word sentence: “I never said you stole his money.” By simply stressing a different word each time, the meaning shifts dramatically — proving how easily even plain English can be misunderstood without context. If that happens with modern English, how much more caution do we need…

People in this episode

Host: Greg Smith

Topics covered

• biblical interpretation
• evangelical practices
• Catholicism
• exegesis
• doctrinal differences
• contextual reading

Keywords

• Bible interpretation
• Calvinism
• evangelicalism
• Catholic solution
• doctrinal chaos
• exegesis
• contextual reading

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Calvinist seminary

Books & works: Bible, Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English lexicon

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